


command me to be well

by Kangoo



Series: LGBT Destiny Month 2019 [27]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Berserk Razel, Canon-typical Hive Bullshit, I Know You're In There Somewhere is a good trope, Killing stuff for fun and profit (and accidentally strangling your boyfriend), LGBT Destiny Month, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 20:34:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19384189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangoo/pseuds/Kangoo
Summary: theme: powerit's easy to forget that Razel is one of the most dangerous Guardians alive. not this time, though.





	command me to be well

**Author's Note:**

> this has been sitting in my drafts for so long i forgot... how it was supposed to end........... 
> 
> me? reusing ideas? it's more likely than you think
> 
> title from hozier's "take me to church"

"Get out of the Tower, Cayde, you've been begging for it for years, Cayde. It will do you some good, Cayde!" 

 

Cayde-6 shoots a handful of Hive Thralls, most of his mind focused in his – perfect – imitation of Zavala. He's been working hard on it! It sounds so much like him it's uncanny. And hilarious, of course.

 

Zavala doesn't find it so, but then again Zavala has very little in term of humor.

 

"You couldn't send me somewhere nice, nooo! You just had to send me on Mars, with the _Hive_ ," he grumbles. His knife hits the gas canister of a Cabal with a Flamethrower and it explodes, showering their surroundings with bits of charred flesh...-ish stuff. "Sometimes I wonder if you only send me on shitty missions so I'll stop asking for 'em."

 

He reloads in one quick movement, spins to face an approaching enemy and almost shoots Razel in the head. His fellow guardian skids to a stop and gives him a two-fingers salute. He doesn't even blink at the barrel inches from his forehead.

 

"It's hardly our fault if everything tends to escalate around you two," Zavala notes. 

 

He's right: it's hard to put Razel and Cayde on the same planet and get a peaceful afternoon out of it. Together they _wil_ _l_ find something flammable and they _will_ blow it up. They don't always mean to, it just kind of... Happens. Systematically.

 

And honestly? He blames Razel. He never had this problem when he ran alone.

 

(One Vex teleporter accident notwithstanding.)

 

But in his defense, this mission was a clusterfuck from the get go. Hive on Mars doing some weird ritual to make uber-Knight or whatever it is they plan in those ugly little chitinous head of theirs? Bad. Cabal dropping by to do what they do best and obliterate them? Good in theory, terrible with two Guardians stuck in the middle. He has no idea why he agreed to it.

 

... Alright. Maybe Cayde has an idea. It includes kicking Hive and Cabal ass and looking really good doing it. But then their Ghosts got caught in a Hive trap and it stopped being fun really fast.

 

Hive... fluids are just so hard to get out of clothes. This is never coming off. And he liked those pants.

 

Razel is happy as a clam out there. He doesn't have to worry about clean clothes: the guy's such a hoarder he must have enough spare robes pilfered off caches and whatnot to last him an entire year without wearing the same one twice. Good for him.

 

He's gleefully hacking his way through the hostile horde, chattering on the com as he goes. The analog kind of hacking, with that huge, sharpened piece of scrap metal he calls a sword.

 

"I'm gonna try and free the Ghosts," he calls out.

 

"Sure. I'll cover you." Not that Razel needs covering, the way he throws himself at the melee, almost laughing with wild joy.

 

Well. At least one of them is having fun.

 

Usually Cayde would be, too. He's never been against a good murder session between pals. But today... He doesn't know why he's in such a bad mood. He's been jumpy and irritable all day. There's just something putting him on edge, doesn't know what. His Hunter-sense is screaming bloody murder and there's no amount of shooting that can alleviate that headache. If anything it's making it worse.

 

He ducks behind a rock outcropping and pointlessly rubs his forehead. He doesn't have the stuff necessary to have stress headaches – skin, blood, that kind of _stuff_ – but by the Traveler, his body is making an honest effort at it anyway.

 

The psychosomatic bell ringing stops abruptly. He freezes, fingers clutching his gun tighter.

 

"Where're you at buddy?" No response. "Raze?"

 

Only silence answers.

 

Fuck. The minute he stops looking at the guy he just goes and disappears.

 

He runs back in the open, not even sparring a glance to the fanatics rushing at him. A bullet fired blindly takes care of it and he's left looking frantically around for his friend. It's not that he's worried, but a silent Razel is a Razel getting in trouble and Hive trouble is the worst of all.

 

There. Enemies cluttered around something unseen. That must be him. Cayde runs straight for them, aims at a Cursed Thrall, the explosion should clean up some of the crowd–

 

He freezes.

 

It's Razel alright, kneeling in the in front of the trapped Ghosts. But he's chained down by one of those Hive traps and there's a weird crystal floating above him, a wizard chanting ominously in his direction. 

 

Hive trouble. Again, the worst of all.

 

Cayde fires.

 

(He's too slow.)

 

 

 

There's a flash of... Something. Something red. Blood, or fire. Smells like magic, something rotting and battery acid; but something else layered on top. A tingling, kind of ozone-y add-on. A live wire stripped bare. Cayde coughs. That's a taste he's never getting out of his mouth.

 

He picks himself off the ground to the frantic calls of Zavala. There's too much static to make out what he's saying. Cayde taps on the receiver until the signal clears somewhat.

 

"Ca—de — you there?"

 

"Yeah, yeah, big guy, I'm fine." Noxious smoke has engulfed the battlefield, too thick to make out more than vague shapes through the haze. "Razel knocked out his com again?"

 

Zavala grunts something vaguely positive. Cayde is about to quip something back, he's not sure what – he's thinking about it – when he notices an ominous green glow through the slowly dissipating smoke.

 

"I'll call you back," he tells Zavala absentmindedly and cuts the connection without waiting for a reply. 

 

He's cautious as he approaches. The explosion seems to have stunned everything standing around, Cabal and Hive indiscriminately, but you can never be too careful about surprise attack. Still he's curious. The glow emanates from somewhere around where Razel was standing just before, and explosions followed by strange lights never bode well. Especially when that trouble magnet is concerned.

 

Then the biting Mars wind picks up again and blows the smoke away. That's when Cayde realizes how right he is.

 

Razel stands in the same place as before. He doesn't look great. He's... Slouched, bent forward as he sways on his feet. Most of his helmet has been blown away, a good half of his face bare. 

 

The light is coming from the body of the sorceress he holds in one hand: it glows softly, ominously, as it turns to ashes in his grasp.

 

"I don't want to interrupt your moment buddy but there's an awful lot of Cabal looking at you right now," he says carefully. There an odd weight to the air, a sense of wrongness that makes him wary of startling Razel.

 

Razel slowly turns his head to him. The movement is jerky, unnatural. His focus too intense, a predator tearing itself from its catch to eye a new prey.

 

The eyes staring back at him are poison-green, nothing like the flaming glow of Razel.

 

"Aw, shit," he says eloquently before booking it.

 

Razel leaps after him, a snarl caught in his throat. He's stopped in his track by the Cabal troops. They shook the shock off and stand between the two guardians, ready to get rid of their last opponents before moving on to seizing this Hive ritual. 

 

Razel doesn't reach for his weapons. He doesn't even stop. He throws himself at the closest soldier, his still-bound hand clinging to its shoulders as he headbutts it hard enough to crack its helmet. 

 

Ohhh, that must hurt. The Legionary staggers back and Razel takes advantage of the opportunity to surge forward and–

 

Tear its throat out with his bare hands.

 

That's... Way too brutal. Even for Razel.

 

The soldiers collapses, bleeding black goo everywhere. Cayde stops in his tracks, turns on his heels, jogs back to Razel just as another jumps at him. A gladiator, this time. He whirls around, lighting-quick, and blocks its cleaver with his restraints. They shatter under the blow. The weapon continues its path downward, slashing down his chest.

 

He doesn't blink. Doesn't flinch or gasps. And when the Gladiator attacks again, he doesn't dodge.

 

He bears the brunt of the blow and let the cleaver sink up to the hilt in his stomach. Cayde winces, picking up the pace to reach them, but Razel barely staggers. He slides in the bloody mud but holds his grounds. Blood bubbles out of his mouth and drips down his chin as he snarls. His hands curl around the weapon. There's a hiss and Cayde realizes it's burning through his protective gloves and, by the scent of it, through his flesh as well.

 

Razel holds on tighter. He pushes against the weapon. There's a wet squelch as it sinks deeper into his guts. Cayde is close enough to hear it and wishes he hadn't.

 

With a twist of his wrists and a powerful kick, Razel manages to tear the sword out of the Gladiator's hands. He stumbles back a few steps, doesn't even pause before he's wrenching it out with his two hands, careless of the blood splattering at his feet. At least the white-hot metal cauterized the wound

 

Cayde takes aim and fires, shooting another Legionary in the head before it can sneak up on Razel. Razel doesn't blink at the deafening sound so close to him. He's too far gone to care.

 

Already he's swinging his newly acquired weapon of destruction. It slashes through the air and the Gladiator's neck before it can react, and it collapses, head bouncing a few feet away from this rest of its body.

 

Razel doesn't even think to stop before he's on another enemy, sword first. The way he moves is unfamiliar, a warped image of his usual style. He leaps on his enemies like a rabid animal, more throwing his stolen sword around than truly wielding it. There's no grace to it. Only wild, brute force. That in and on itself isn't much different from his style. But it doesn't usually have so much savagery to it.

 

He cuts a Centurion almost in half,  and suddenly it's a Knight in front of him – then Thralls, Legionaries, until Razel is visible more by the path of destruction among the mass of enemies than anything else. Cayde loses sight of him even as he shoots blindly, trying in vain to thin out the horde until he runs out of ammo.

 

Turns out Razel doesn't need any help anyway. Quickly, the kind of quick that says 'rampage' rather than plain efficiency, he fights his way through his enemies. With extreme prejudice.

 

And when he's done with it he stands in the center of the carnage, covered head to toe in blood and gore, and turns back to Cayde.

 

He regrets, for a brief moment, not having run farther away. He doesnt get to do that now. Doesn't even have time to raise his gun. Not that it would help: the Ace is empty and he didn't think to bring another gun. He really needs to go out in the field more. He's lost his touch.

 

Razel slams into him with a roar like a Cabal warbeast. Doesn't immediately tear his head off, though, even as Cayde lays stunned under him. His full weight settles on Cayde's midsection, hands clawing at his neck in an attempt to strangle him.

 

"Usually this'd be sexy, but right now-"

 

Hands close around his throat, choking the end of his sentence out of him. Might be better off that way. There's a time and place for wisecracking and when your boyfriend is trying to kill you for real isn't it.

 

He's doing an honest effort at it too, leaning all his weight forward, teeth grinded in a snarl. But it takes more than that to choke out an Exo.

 

(Easier to destroy the lungs immediately. Cutting their main air supply is good to hinder them, weaken them, not kill them. Still hurts like a bitch though.)

 

Cayde slams the butt of the Ace in the side of Razel's head, the half that's not protected by the broken helmet. The blow is enough to throw him off, ease the pressure of his hands slightly. Cayde takes a great gulp of air even as he knees Razel in the stomach, throwing him off him. He's not winded for long – just long enough for Cayde to roll over and pins him down. 

 

Razel may have the advantage of brute strength but Cayde will always be better at hand-to-hand. He knows all his tricks: he taught them to him.

 

He sits on Razel's stomach, digs his knees in his elbows to keep his arms pinned down. 

 

"Razel, hey, Raze," he whispers while unsheathing his knives. "Wake up buddy. Wakey wakey eggs an' bakey. C'mon."

 

Razel growls, surges forward and snaps his teeth on empty air. Cayde doesn't flinch or let go. He keeps whispering in a soothing tone, starts working his knives into the manacles around Razel's wrists. They glow a malevolent green, not quite drowned out by the golden light imbuing his knives, and hum slightly under the tip of his blades.

 

"Come on love, darling, sunshine, sweetheart, dearest, honeybunch. Snap out of it," he says – pleads. "I know you're in there, just- fight it. You're good at fighting, you're the best- Come on come on come _on_!"

 

The last part is directed at the damned shackles. Hairline fractures course through them. But their weird, almost metallic organic material won't break.

 

Until it does.

 

It cracks right through. There's a burst of green light, followed by smoke, and then they're off shattered halves laying next to Razel's arms.

 

As soon as they're off the fight goes right out of Razel. The green fades from his eyes and his face relaxes into an expression of confusion.

 

Softly, he says, "Cayde? What- did we win?"

 

Cayde heaves a sigh and lets his head falls against Razel's shoulder, his shoulders dropping in breathless relief. Razel lifts a hand to pat him on the back in slightly bemused comfort.

 

"Fuck yeah we did buddy. You cleaned the place right up."

 

"Oh. Cool. Don't recall. Where's Cubix? And Sundance?"

 

Cayde takes a second, listening to the frantic beat of his heart. Breathes in and out, slowly. Then he gets to his feet and holds out a hand for Razel. 

 

"Let's go get them," he says. He doesn't let go once Razel is up, entwining their fingers together. Holding on, just to be sure. 

 

He's seen what happens when he lets Razel out of his sight.

 


End file.
